Wednesday, March 03, 2004

CRN : Breaking News : Sun To Offer 'Per-Citizen' Software Pricing by June 30: "Sun Microsystems software chief Tuesday said Sun plans to offer what the company is calling 'per-citizen' pricing for its Java software to countries outside of the United States by June 30, the end of the vendor's 2004 fiscal year.
Both the Java Enterprise System (JES), a suite of enterprise-scale infrastructure software, and the Java Desktop System (JDS), a Linux-based desktop operating system (OS), will have such pricing, said Sun Executive Vice President of Software Jonathan Schwartz, speaking at Sun's San Francisco office Tuesday.
The per-citizen pricing, which he proposed could be something like 40 cents per individual user -- with that user being a citizen of a country -- would allow nations that are underdeveloped technology-wise, such as China or the Philippines, to have access to affordable networking technology. "